Gretchen Peri has been concerned in serving to governments around the globe discover higher methods to make use of expertise for greater than 20 years. For the final 14 years, she led the International Public & Social Influence observe at Slalom Consulting.
She is now bringing her worldwide expertise house to Washington state as the brand new CTO of Washington Expertise Options (WaTech).
WaTech was established in 2011 as Washington state’s consolidated expertise providers company. Just about wherever the state is utilizing expertise to ship providers, this company is concerned.
Peri is now working to implement an bold new strategic plan that she says is aimed toward enhancing how Washington makes use of expertise to serve residents. Peri can also be the opening keynote speaker on the Bellevue Innovation Trade Oct. 16 at Bellevue Metropolis Corridor.
GeekWire caught up with Peri to speak about how WaTech plans to make use of AI, cloud platforms, upgraded on-line providers, and a cultural shift in focus to enhance what it presents to state residents — and to take action at a time when state budgets are tight, and federal steerage and regulation round AI and tech continues to be evolving. The interview was edited for brevity and readability.
GeekWire: What attracted you to this position?
Peri: “I’ve spent the final 20 years of my profession in administration consulting, serving to state and native governments leverage expertise to higher ship on their enterprise outcomes. At my earlier agency, I led our international authorities schooling and nonprofit enterprise. And as thrilling as that was, I additionally discovered that I used to be making a small influence in numerous completely different locations. At this level in my profession, I need to have a big influence in a single place. That’s what drew me to the state. And I’m so glad I’m right here.”
GeekWire: What are your prime three priorities as CTO?
Peri: “I’d say my three areas of focus are:
- Placing residents first and on the coronary heart of every part we design and deploy.
- Delivering accountable expertise — particularly with a number of the new and rising applied sciences we’re seeing, with guardrails that assist our workers make the perfect selections doable about how and when to leverage expertise of their work.
- Utilizing expertise to enhance our total providers.
From in line to on-line, we wish to have the ability to ship our providers the place persons are, once they want it, and in no matter language they should obtain it in.”
GeekWire: The brand new 2025 IT strategic plan requires the event of enterprise requirements for rising applied sciences, together with AI, automation, and cloud platforms, to make sure safety, fairness, and applicable use. How massive a elevate do you suppose that might be?
Peri: “One of many largest lifts, I believe, is definitely cultural. Governments at all times design their providers from how we function, relatively than fascinated about how residents and prospects really have to obtain our providers. So it’s that cultural shift that I believe goes to be probably the most thrilling transformation and doubtless probably the most work for us as we glance to leverage rising applied sciences, together with AI, in the best manner.
One other space the place businesses are very eager about utilizing new and rising applied sciences is how we expose our enterprise data base — with chatbots and different issues that many jurisdictions are deploying proper now. We’ve received very wealthy info however discovering that info generally is a problem for our residents. So utilizing our enterprise data base to ship the knowledge to our residents is one other space.
Pc imaginative and prescient is definitely one of many actually thrilling areas, and we’re seeing this as we glance to do automated inspections to assist maintain our workers protected, or monitor the well being of our pure surroundings. There are some actually fascinating AI use instances round figuring out and monitoring the well being of fish or several types of eelgrass within the Puget Sound and in our oceans.
There’s additionally conversational and translational AI. The expertise has come to a degree now the place we’re capable of present our content material in a whole bunch of languages. And even on this space, we now have teams, we now have communities that talk distinctive languages. And so the advances in expertise enable us to achieve them and talk with them a lot simpler than it was.
Lastly, (there may be) agentic workflow. That’s round automating our enterprise operations at scale, beginning with issues which can be easy and easy, like bill matching or different kinds of issues the place we are able to guarantee that we’re validating the knowledge, after which we are able to transfer on to the duty at hand.”
GeekWire: It appears like one in every of your largest challenges is perhaps round siloed info.
Peri: “Our downside is strictly such as you stated, we now have silos inside these departments which can be managing their knowledge. We even have silos inside regulation enforcement businesses, the place they’ve their information administration system and their dispatch system and their proof administration system. So bringing knowledge collectively inside businesses is our first problem after which bringing knowledge collectively from a number of businesses goes to be our second problem.”
GeekWire: As you’re attempting to convey AI to all of this, it’s more difficult if you must ship AI off to an entire bunch of various locations.
Peri: “Precisely, and till we convey that knowledge collectively, can we actually establish and observe the outcomes we’re trying to generate? We are able to observe outputs, how many individuals we’re serving with one of these services or products, however we are able to’t essentially say that we’re delivering a more healthy inhabitants or a extra resilient inhabitants. In order that’s the principle focus of why we have to convey that knowledge collectively to create a basis upon which we are able to actually begin to measure these outcomes and transfer these levers.”
GeekWire: Federal steerage and rules on AI and tech are nonetheless evolving. How do you propose to navigate uncertainty and evolution on the nationwide stage?
Peri: “I’m nonetheless just one month in. (However it’s about) leveraging the federal requirements which have been in place for fairly a while and ensuring that we’re offering our pointers and rules that match the tradition of Washington and (how) we need to create a welcoming surroundings for everybody on this state. And that’s about all I can say on the federal state dialogue.”
GeekWire: Do the state’s present finances challenges change what you must do within the IT strategic plan?
Peri: “I believe that on this finances constrained surroundings, it’s much more essential that we depend on our expertise to have the ability to attain individuals who really want it proper now and ship providers extra digitally in order that they’ll entry them simpler.”
GeekWire: If there’s one factor you’d like Washington residents to have the ability to say a 12 months from now concerning the providers provided by WaTech, what would it not be?
Peri: “I consider the quote: ‘I count on distinctive, however I’ll accept superior’. Once I look again, I need to have the ability to say that throughout the board once we get to work together with individuals at pivotal factors of their lives, which we do as authorities, that we now have supplied distinctive customer support to them.”
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